It's a two-horse race, no question. Apple and Google's grip on the world smartphone market tightened even further during Q2, with everyone else's combined share falling to 15 per cent from 34.3 per cent in the year-ago quarter.
The numbers come from IDC, a market watcher, and they chart RIM's decline - from an 11.5 per cent …

Re: It just goes to show

Re: here is why

The Fandroids has now become the new sheep.

Have now? They've always been cheap, disfunctional and fake copies of their fruity counterparts. Just like their phones. The Peng Peng cloned sheep of the smartphone world, including the extra worm genes.

Re: here is why

Why? With Android, you can pick whatever phone you like, from all the big companies.

Perfer a keyboard over a touchscreen, no problem.

Like small phones rather than large? no problem.

Want one thats waterproof? no problem...

The whole POINT of Android is you aren't a sheep. You can pick and choose your DEVICE... And if your requirements change in the future, no problem either, you just sell it and buy a different Android device, all your contacts, all your apps, all your content is there to go with you... No lock-in to a specific hardware supplier.

Re Obviously!

"Stop trying to big up the iPhone. They are just as cheap. I could walk into my local high street and get one FREE!

Also, do you really think that a products price has any bearing?"

You should take a bus, then a train, and when you finally reach an international airport, jump on a plane, away from your cosy little high street. I think you'll find in many many many many more parts of the world that price has a HUGE baring on things, and the (false) luxury of subsidised plans is but a dream. In these markets iPhones (and yes yes, top end 'droids too) are aspirational, with your cheap and dirty 'droids being the winners due to pure economic necessity. I mean, obviously!

But please, just continue on in your little world where the butcher asks if you're local.

Re: Celebrate good time come on

LoLtastic

If we were to assume, for the sake of the excercise, that in 2011 Nokia = Symbian we see that they had 17% market share.

Now it is a year later and we are witnessing the results of Elops "burning platform" strategy where Windows was supposed to replace Symbian.

Let's be extremely generous and give ALL Windows phone sales to Nokia (instead of sharing them around the few manufacturers that produce Winphones) and we can see that Nokia now has 8% market share, or less than half of last year.

I wonder when Nokia shareholders are going to start demanding that Elop producing results instead of a steady stream of epic fails?

Re: LoLtastic

The market share of Symbian has been in freefall since the second half of 2010, long before 'burning platforms'. Many argue that the infamous memo hastened the fall of Symbian, and maybe that is true, but it was dying on it's arse long before the speech. The most likely cause was Android phones arriving in developed markets in large numbers and multiple price points.

Nokia: "The platform, it is burning"

My prediction? he'll vanish* from Nokia to destroy another company that Microsoft will buy. Timescale? Before the end of this year.

*He doesn't have a reputation for being a 'stayer'. Neither did Simon Beresford-Wylie, when he set up the disastrous NSN millstone - which seems to have been partly instrumental in causing Nokia's woes. Noticed he pissed off sharpish, too, when he saw the iceberg his Titanic struck looming.

Re: LoLtastic

@Dan 55

The author of that blog was being very disingenuous with that graph.

Firstly, he quotes smartphone sales rather than market share. At the end of 2010, smartphone sales were exploding rapidly, and Nokia managed to grow sales even when market share was falling. At the start of 2011, there was no growth over the previous quarter, so the decline of market share became evident in sales. Secondly, he doesn't include the whole market in the graph. If he had, Nokia would not have looked so rosey - I seem to remember HTC had success with Android before Samsung did.

I urge you to read Tomi Ahonen's postings from the end of January 2011. You will discover his opinions of Nokia's performance before 'burning platforms' happened, and why I think he was being disingenuous.

Question the data

The market's shifting. Android's changed the market by allowing phones <£200 to be smart. People who in the past would have just bought a regular phone, now buy a smart phone. Whether they use it as such is open to debate.

Re: Question the data

Much the same could be said for the shift from typewriters to PCs, back in the day. Probably explains why tablets are so popular, as they eliminate the 'general purpose programmable computer' nonsense that has been a headache for users all these years.

I'm only half joking there, as just like the winds of fashion that blow between centralised and distributed computing models, there is the to-and-fro between general-purpose and appliance computing in which the appliances eventually become fat, programmable, and hard to understand.

Of course I'm much entertained by all the cloud hype, in the old days I believe this was called a 'computing bureau'?

Re: Question the data

As a mobile developer I think this is the real question. Android has much higher market share for smartphones, so in theory it's by far the best platform to develop for. Yet talk to developers, and you'll commonly hear that android only provides about 20% of their income, compared to 80% for iOS.

There has to be some explanation for that, and I do think it's because a lot of people buy an android device to replace their old feature phone, and use it in pretty much the same way.

@Chris 19 "...android only provides about 20% of their income, compared to 80% for iOS."

I would agree that the acceleration in smartphone ownership that we have been witness to has to a very considerable extent gone Android rather than iPhone (given that it would be a touch unusual for someone to jump straight from a feature phone to a highend phone like Apple's offering) with the consequence that many are to a considerable extent using them as a "feature-phone+". However, that (IMHO) does not take sufficiently into account Apple's traditional demographic which is (whether some of their supporters like it or not) the "well heeled middle classes" in income terms if not that precise demographic in social terms. The last survey I saw of customer groups within "smartphonery" from the States (about ten months ago) indicated that the "typical" Apple customer (ie approximately 50% of their demographic) in the US is male, 25 - 35 years old and lives in a household where the household income is over $100.000 per annum. Given that is the case it seems highly likely that Apple have a larger percentage of customers with significantly above average incomes than the Android os does. In other words the devs do better out of Apple customers because they have more money to spend than is typical amongst Android customers. This of course is hardly surprising since Cupertino have, with considerable success, been courting that demographic for the last two decades or so.

Re: @Chris 19 "...android only provides about 20% of their income, compared to 80% for iOS."

That's probably a large part of it too. The same group of people buy audio, bmw and mercedes too, even though they could get a ford for less money.

The thing is though, it makes iOS the better platform by default. When I start planning a new project and look at the platforms, android offers less income for more work. I only consider it as either a secondary platform. Therefore my apps appear either only or first on iOS, and the iOS version gets a lot more attention. Most developers are doing exactly the same.

If you consider the platform to be something you run apps on (which after all is the real point of a smartphone), the quality of the apps is critical - and iOS ends up way ahead.

@Chris 19 Re:"Therefore my apps appear either only or first on iOS"

Indeed, the business case for a dev in these circumstances is entirely understandable (I speak as someone who runs a Desire Z) and if one is earning one's "daily bread" in that way one has to follow the money. Currently this means, of course, that the situation is self-reinforcing as long as there is no Android "hero-phone" that begins to attract a similar demographic. Although it has to be said that Sammy's Galaxy series is now beginning to attract the kind of kudos and sales that suggest that such a shift is possible (albeit not certain). One can at any rate remark that it is reasonably obvious that Cupertino are entirely convinced that the only Android competitor (currently) that is any threat to them is Samsung!

Re: Question the data

Because those reports you get your information from, are all part of the Apple viral marketing to pretend that there isn't a mass exedous towards Android development.

It's quite obvious on the ground however it's now VERY different. Most apps/games launch at the same time, or sooner than their iOS counterparts. That's partly helped by the fact that on Android, you don't need (nor should you use) separate iPhone and iPad versions..

Re: Question the data

> Yet talk to developers, and you'll commonly hear that android only provides about 20% of their income, compared to 80% for iOS.

That is very true for app store/google purchases. However there is also a large demand for buisness apps which never go anywhere near the stores, in my experience android is by far the biggest earner. Consider a say a warehousing app for a tablet or a team of field engineers, don't have to be anything flash

> There has to be some explanation for that, and I do think it's because a lot of people buy an android device to replace their old feature phone, and use it in pretty much the same way.

Very true. My own wife is now on her third android phone, never used the play store and after two months I heard her mention it wasn't as good as her previous one and it didn't even have netflix (previously I loaded everything I thought she'd want). Now she knows the store is there she had a quick look and never touched it again. She also never used teh app store on her iphone.

Re: Question the data

"you'll commonly hear that android only provides about 20% of their income"

Apple had a head-start and a much larger installed base. Android only passed in installed numbers a few months ago. If Android continues to outsell iPhone by 4:1 these numbers will change very quickly.

Emerging markets

"But IDC's data show the value of enabling low-cost product in other markets, particularly emerging ones. The rise of the budget Android smartphone is clearly playing dividends for Google."

That depends on how you define value. If it's number of units shipped, then yes. If it's income, the value is probably low - especially for google, whose income is mostly from advertising. Emerging market customers are not high value customers in the eyes of the advertisers. It's probably low for the handset makers too, if the customers in these countries are buying low-end and low-margin phones.

Re: The Baron

Re:,Re: Futurology

sometimes with an touch screen your right thumb will select things at random or sometimes you can just hit the wrong button, I have several times voted the wrong way and been unable to change my mistake.

Why Android and not iPhone for my sister.

She has an old feature phone that is getting buggy and has a scratched screen.

She asked me to sort out a replacment for her, said she loves her mates iPhone but not sure she wants to pay that much and can i get something thats as nice but cheaper.

Well I bought a Huawei Ascend G300 for £83 (had a voucher) spent a fiver unlocking it and sold the PAYG sim on ebay for a fiver.

Set it up with lots of useful apps and satnav etc and handed it to her. She loves it and even her iPhone loving mate thinks its a great phone. Best of all Vodaphone rolling out ICS to it very soon.

Moral is unless you love iPhone enough to be happy to pay hundreds you can get a great Android smartphone for a fraction of the price, in these cash strapped times that will boost market share quickly.

Re: Why Android and not iPhone for my sister.

Re: Why Android and not iPhone for my sister.

I'm real happy that that phone works well for your sister, but I would not describe that phone as "great" - "competent", "good value" maybe.

A "great" Android phone would be the Nexus S or a Galaxy S III, both of which are comparable in spec and price to the iphone. Android phones are not cheaper than the equivalent Apple phone, but Apple does not provide a comparable low end model.

Re: Why Android and not iPhone for my sister.

How can you state that Apple's (in conjunction with Google's) grip on the world smartphone market tightened even further during Q2, when Apple's share actually dropped from 18.8% to 16.9% in that time? Yes, iOS obviously has the second biggest share, but it's clearly Android eating that the difference, as well as everyone else's lost share...

@ Big_Ted

I see your point, but this article is specifically talking about share (as in percentage), not number of units, because it's claiming Android and iOS are pwning the rest. Apple lost share from one chart to the other, so the claim they're part of the pwnage is misleading.